Absolutes and Extremes
by The Cloaked Guardian
Summary: "Gotham has always been a city on edge... a city of absolutes and extremes." A look at the Batman's war on crime from the city he fights for.
1. Part I

Gotham has always been a city on the edge.

It is touted as the nation's "greatest city" – but it is known as the nation's most corrupt.

It harbors the greatest wealth in the country – perhaps even the world – with power players such as Bruce Wayne and Oswald Cobblepot, but it also contains poverty and crime nearly unmatched in the rest of the country.

It is known as the land of Arkham insanity, of Zsasz and Riddler and Joker – but it contains the man who some call humanity's greatest hero, the Batman.

Gotham is a city of absolutes and extremes.

There was a time when the just and the unjust moved in closer circles than they did now, in Old Gotham, before the Batman, when the greatest danger of leaving a house was not the Joker but the mob.

The mob was not as bad, all say, as the new lot.

But some say it was worse.

Under the mob, the corruption and the darkness that they brought to the great city, Gotham withered and decayed, a great eagle whose heart was gnawed at daily by tiny worms. Although the people of Gotham were ready, at any moment, to fight against the mob, they lacked the tools they needed. They lacked a leader. They lacked a champion. So they only sat and watched, as their city grew weaker and weaker, as control passed from the workingman to the manager to the mob.

When everything changed, only one man knew it.

When Bruce Wayne was eight years old, his parents were murdered in front of him in Park Row – a street that would later forsake its old name and take on a new one more befitting of its new stature and symbolism. Perhaps it set an example to the young Wayne.

When Wayne returned to Gotham City, eighteen years later, he had the means to destroy the mob in Gotham, the corruption that was eating his city's spirit, but he did not have the method. He was ready to lead the charge into the bowels of Gotham, to eradicate those who would break his city, but he could not do it under this face. He was only human, and the leader of the charge had to be more than a man.

He became the Batman.

At first, he was alone, and he despaired. Alone, he could never excise the darkness that had infected his city. Alone, he could never bring justice back to Gotham and remove the filth. He fought, but he fought with the knowledge that he would lose.

Gotham sent him support.

It hunted, both far and wide and within its own heart. It gave its prodigal son new champions, supports in his unending war. Gotham called upon Harvey Dent and James Gordon, and told them that they were needed.

They were good men. How could they refuse?

Gordon gave the Bat his access to the world of Gotham where people did not fear, where their lives were not ruled by the crusade. Gordon showed Batman Gotham's humanity, and the city exulted.

And Dent… Dent was more than Gordon could ever be for the city. He was the champion that Gotham needed, a man of integrity, a man of justice, a man of hope, a man with a face who could lead Gotham to the future it needed.

Against all odds, in the face of the crime, Gotham was winning.

But the city underestimated its enemy. While the darkness was retreating, losing, its grip on the city's soul being loosened every day, the darkness was learning. In the Bat and Dent and Gordon the darkness finally understood the heart of Gotham, and, finally seeing the path to its victory, it struck.

Gotham's weakness was not in its common men. They were the backbone of the city, the strength that had propelled it to such great heights and would do so again, given the chance.

Gotham's weakness was in its heroes, who were driven by such great determination and vigor that they could stand against the rolling tides of the mob and madmen. They had given their soul to Gotham, and trusted that they would not be there for the paradise they created. The only way to stop them was if they pushed too far.

The darkness made its move.

It gave Jim Gordon a son – the son he always wanted – a son infected by the darkness that was rampant in Gotham. It gave the Bat an enemy, something immune to his methods, something that he could not understand, and something that he could not stop without breaking his soul.

And it gave Harvey Dent a burned face.

The darkness stole from the city its greatest weapon – its greatest hope – and turned him to the darkness's own ends. Harvey Dent forsook his past, his strength in Gotham, and became Two-Face: the enemy of the choice that Gotham had chosen to make.

Robbed of its greatest hope, Gotham was once again in the thrall of the darkness. Gordon and Batman were lost without Dent – without the hope that they so desperately needed to keep them from falling into the same trap he fell to – and the Joker pursued Batman's destruction with a zeal unmatched. His only mission was to break the Bat, and he was nearing victory.

Gotham could not accept defeat.

It gave its all, hunting for its aces in the hole, hunting for any card to play to bring the Batman and Gordon back to their mission without turning to the opposite side.

It gave Gordon a daughter, a lost child of Gotham, who shared Gordon's appetite for justice, for cleansing the great city if its infection. Gotham gave Gordon hope once again.

And to Batman, Gotham gave Dick Grayson. It took his parents from Dick, the brilliant athlete, the artist, the leader, the man who would be Batman, and tied him to the city. It gave him to Bruce Wayne, and Grayson learned justice and Wayne learned hope.

He became Gotham City's Robin. A soldier of the city not dragged down by the darkness, but infused with the light, so that he would never fall, and so that he would bring the people of Gotham up with him, and lead the world behind Gotham's flag.

But Gotham moved too soon, in its desperation to save itself. Although its stopgap measure prevented the Batman from falling, and killing the Joker, and its use of Barbara Gordon was a master stroke, Grayson was not yet ready to work with Wayne, and Wayne was even more unready to work with Grayson. Although he gave the boy the training and the skills he would need in time to protect the city, he was not ready for the age that Grayson would usher in, and he clamped down too tightly.

Gotham relented to young Grayson's plea, and let him go far away, to learn the methods of the outer world, to come back to Gotham stronger and greater and more powerful than he could have ever been.

But while Grayson prepared himself for what he would need to do, the Batman began to flounder again.

It was at this time that the city made its greatest mistake, the one that it would look back upon in years to come and think, "Why?"

The answer was, of course, that the city was desperate. It saw its hero – one of the few remaining – slipping into the darkness, and instead of trusting its greatest son to stand tall against the tide, to fight the darkness wherever he saw it, it panicked and sent him another hope.

This new Robin, though, was not what he needed to be.

Jason Todd was not the same as Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson had been. He carried not just the iron determination that Gotham would need but the rage that was so easily corrupted. Jason stretched himself, trying to end the scourge of Gotham, and when he stepped too far, it was too late for the city and the Batman both to save him.

The Joker killed Jason Todd, and he brought the Batman closest to breaking than he ever had before.

For all functions and purposes, the city had lost at this point. Its champion was ready to give into the darkness, and Gordon would soon follow. The Joker had won.

The city owes it survival not to its own tools, not even to humanity, but to a being that came from off this planet, off the scope of Gotham, against every Gotham ideal and decision. Kal-El from Krypton came down from cities of light and crystal, where the weak were not afraid to walk the streets, and stopped the Batman's hand when he was ready to give himself up to the darkness.

The city was unable to every forgive Kal-El his transgression, no matter how vital it was for Gotham's survival. It poisoned its champion with suspicion, with darkness, to defend himself from Kal-El, to defend himself from the outside world, because the darkness that was created in Gotham had to be solved in Gotham, or nothing would be solved at all. Let Kal-El keep to Metropolis or Kandor; he could stay there, while Gotham became a city of lead and Kryptonite.

Desperate once again, on its last breaths, Gotham could only watch, moving pawns into motion, poking and prodding at the champions it was looking for, trying to force them to move, now, even if it wasn't the right time, because Gotham had made a mistake and it was faltering and it needed its hero bolstered once again.

* * *

I'll probably continue this, but I think it's at a good place now and I want to see what you guys think. So, please, review!


	2. Part II

Death in the Family to No Man's Land.

* * *

With Wayne at his darkest hour, Gotham was once again endangered. The Batman was becoming more and more violent, more and more dangerous; he attacked the criminal element without hesitation now, plunging himself into situations without the guarantee of making it out to see another day.

The Batman was attempting to die the way his partner had.

Once upon a time, the city would have sent for Grayson, forced him to come back and support his mentor in his days of weakness, to lift him just as he had as a child. But Grayson was learning his own way, now, outside of the darkened streets of Gotham, and regardless of whether or not he wanted to come back, Wayne was intent on being alone. He had, his rationale was, brought death upon his partner by accepting a partner; no partner meant no death.

When it was exasperated with Wayne, the city wondered about simply letting him off himself. He was certainly a barrier to the organization that would need to be created to save the city.

But Grayson was not ready yet, and Gotham still needed its Batman. So Gotham reached out again, into the world of people ready and eager to save the imperiled city, and found Timothy Drake.

Drake had the tools that he would need to be valuable to the Family. He was not a leader like Grayson, not a brawler like Todd; he was not as skilled as they had been in combat, either. But he was intelligent, to a point where he would soon exceed Wayne after proper training, and he had the potential for the kind of holistic skill and the moral basis that would be necessary for a Batman.

Gotham reached out and prodded his brain, forcing him to _think,_ when it felt that he was ready. To Drake's credit, he did not require much pushing; even without the prompting of the city, he may have found out the secret. Regardless, as soon as he examined the evidence, he realized the trend: the Batman was becoming a loose cannon, even by Gotham standards. Someone had to rein him in.

It took no prodding at all to get Drake to consider himself to be the best possible sidekick to the Bat. Some parts of monolithic plots were best left to teenage hubris.

So Drake, in his youthful confidence, tracked down the Bat as Wayne and laid out the situation. He forced Wayne, in the best Gotham tradition, to accept him as his partner under the threat of blackmail. With Drake as Robin, a young and vigorous influence, Gotham took a deep breath; the situation was, for the moment, under control.

It turned its attention to other things, trusting the newly-minted Batman and Robin to keep the city safe while it was gone.

Jason Todd was too valuable a card to not be played. Gotham hunted around the world for an appropriate means to revive him, and took advantage of the situation it was presented when the universe was reset once again. Riding the sliding stream of time as it shattered, Gotham forged together a new reality: one where Jason Todd woke again, months after his burial, still in his coffin. Although brain damaged, the former Robin was alive and functional, and he would soon be guided to a place where he would be healed.

As a hero who had already fallen, Todd would be invaluable. He had not truly been corrupted toward the darkness; he had died before it could get its hooks in. Yet, simultaneously, Todd's morality had been shaken off-base; he now could not subscribe to the Bat's no-killing policy. He had simply seen too much.

Todd would be a brilliant tool to end the Joker once and for all.

Barbara Gordon had, by this time, matured into a warrior in her own right. Gotham had paid much attention to her; she had taken up the symbol with great success, functional under the mark of the Bat, and the city took it as a sign of its success in riling up the common people.

The darkness inherent to the city struck back, as it always would, utilizing its most powerful tool: the Joker. He shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon from the waist down, and used her torture to attempt to push Jim Gordon over the edge. The city was hooked into Gordon, then, giving its all to protect both of them, its champions, and with the elder, it prevailed: Jim Gordon retained his sanity, and kept the Batman within the check of the rule of law.

But in those efforts, Barbara Gordon was crippled – for life, the city worried. She would never fly again.

But Barbara was nothing if not resourceful. Unable to fight in the means of Bats, she did so in the computer networks, organizing and holding the Bat-family together. She acted as a confidant and a source, and was renowned as the greatest information technology manipulator in the world.

Barbara Gordon never ceased to amaze the city.

But as the patterns began to settle once again – as Batman narrowly avoided his own damnation by killing the Joker – as Todd was dunked inside a Lazarus pit – a new danger approached Gotham.

The darkness had not brought Bane. He came of his own accord.

Bane had been born inside Peña Duro, the dark prison that mimicked Hell to the best ability Gotham had ever known. He was a product of that evil filth, and he ruled the night with a prodigy that would rival the Batman. Panicked, the city attempted to rally the Family to fight this menace, but Wayne, in his typical fashion, rejected them; Nightwing was forced back to the Titans, rebuffed, and Todd could not assist the Batman when the latter was so hell-bent on bringing killers to justice. Wayne was determined to face whatever threats would come with only Robin by his side.

Gotham could not save its champion from himself.

When Bane released the prisoners from Arkham, Gotham could only watch as Wayne hunted them down, one by one, becoming infected and pushing himself still farther, to the point of near collapse. Wayne allowed himself to be manipulated and pushed by a mere man, and when he was at his weakest, deprived of rest and health, Bane struck.

It was a move that the city would have admired had it not been so effective.

Bane – a man, a human man – attacked the Batman in his place of power, his throne, and broke him. Bane proved he ruled the night by dragging the Batman's body around the streets of Gotham, and the city screamed as its champion's blood filled the city's own arteries.

The city reached out for Grayson – he was not ready to wear the mantle, but someone had to – the city was collapsing – where was the Batman – who ruled the night – BANE ruled the night – pain and chaos – darkness coming by the hand of man – what rose here? – Wayne rejected Grayson yet again – _Grayson_ rejected Grayson, refused to don the cowl – what was going on – why were the heroes collapsing – who would wear the cowl? Who would rule the night? – Wayne was collapsing – who?

Wayne blocked Gotham's frantic attempts to salvage what was left of its own wreckage, and brought in Jean-Paul Valley, Azrael, Death's Dark Knight, to be the Batman.

_Damn you_, the city thought.

Azrael was not Batman. Azrael could never be Batman. Azrael did not rule the night as the Batman had to. Drake could not keep Azrael in check. Everything was falling around the towers of Gotham, and its bones began to quake with the stress of holding up the city of madmen when its greatest hero was gone.

Wayne began to train to heal his broken back, and despite its newfound hate for its champion, Gotham assisted him, because there was nothing else that it could do. And it waited for Azrael to break, as it knew that he would.

The city was looking forward to saying "I warned you."

Azrael broke – but he broke Bane with him, taking down the monster from hell with weaponry that could not police a city. By being a not-Batman – by being something the Batman could never be – he returned control of the city to the emblem that he wore.

Wayne returned from his training a stronger Batman, and challenged Azrael to take the cowl back. With his gained strength, with a back that did not shatter and crack at the slightest touch, Wayne won back his city.

It was at this time, the city decided, that Todd should be put into action. The Joker had done enough damage. He had crippled a defender of the city; he had killed an assistant to the Batman, a possible Batman. He had been ridiculously effective, and he had to be stopped.

Todd was dispatched to find the Joker. To kill him. It was a task that may well push him over the edge, but it had to be done; Gotham had to be cleansed of that corruptive influence, that evil masterstroke.

Todd, in typical Todd fashion, fucked it up. Gotham found itself sympathizing with the Batman – after all, how were you supposed to preserve a soldier who wouldn't even follow orders?

Instead of making the issue between him and the clown, instead of acting like a _professional_ and merely shooting him, Todd had to get up close and personal. And instead of doing it like a man out for revenge, he did it like a man out for an agenda, and brought his father along for the ride. Todd laid the Batman's crimes at his feet and demanded redemption, demanded atonement, and demanded an explanation for why this monster was not dead.

Which, of course, would be nice if Wayne was going to be the Batman forever, but he wouldn't be. Wayne was an obsessed idiot with a superiority complex and misogyny buried in his bones, and he would have to change a lot else before he would change about the necessity of killing.

So Wayne, in his best tradition, stopped Todd from eliminating the Joker, and Gotham cast Todd away; he would not be a useful tool for a while yet, until the renewal of the cycle and the rebirth of the Batman.

Gotham decided that the family needed some women.

It was far too male-oriented, with a definite male hero/female villain complex, and that was simply unacceptable, especially given Wayne's attitude. Gotham hunted, just as it had before, and found Cassandra Cain: the greatest fighter on the planet, with skills that would leave most observers thinking that she was a metahuman. Cain had been trained since birth to fight, and sacrificed her ability to speak for the ability to read the bodies of her opponents.

Gotham also drew in Stephanie Brown, who became the Spoiler. She was the child of an Arkham inmate, spawn of the infesting darkness, but she did her best to mitigate the sins of her father, and donned a cowl to save the city from what she could.

At first, Gotham thought that young Brown was motivated by her darkness, just as every other member of the family before her was; it took the city years to realize that was not her intent. She was not atoning for sins, not working in the style of the Bat. She was a paragon, a hopeful, the first person to open the door into a better Gotham; a Kryptonian-style crimefighter.

The city would need her for it, eventually, but the time was not right now for her relentless optimism. Then again, it was the hallmark of her kind that, no matter what, they kept the optimism.

Gotham began to associate Brown with the young Robin, Drake, and began guiding Cain to Gotham City after she ran away from her father and his ideologies. They would soon converge in Gotham, a new generation of Batgirls, and Gotham schemed away with what it needed to do. New resources were being played at the right time, the failure of the Knightfall seemed far away, and everything was going absolutely swimmingly.

In retrospect (which the city had gotten good at, over its centuries of life), of course this was the time that the Quake would hit.

The Quake was not merely a physical phenomenon. It was an attack on the great city – an attack largely engineered by the darkness, but one that soon garnered the participation of Gotham City's oh-so-willing villains. In what seemed like an instant, the city was hit with a devastating sucker punch of an earthquake, and its offshoot Blüdhaven was bombed with chemicals. The city was then shunned by the other cities, citing its darkness and its unpredictability – and most of all, its danger.

Gotham resolved to show them – to show them all – just what kind of mistake they had made by trying to control it.

But it was met immediately with challenges that it found much more vexing than they ever had been before. Wayne almost immediately abandoned his duties as Batman, choosing instead to attempt to convince the other cities to take Gotham back, and when he failed he chose to take shelter in his Manor, just as Achilles had in his tent so long ago.

Some Gothamites fled. Some died. Some turned to crime, and the gangs enveloped the city without the check of the Batman or the police force. But Gotham was a city that had been at war for many years, and this seemed merely a new step in that war. Most Gothamites endured, carried on, because that had been their life for as long as they could remember.

When the Batman finally returned to his city, the city gave him all the resources that it could offer, though it had been crippled by a lack of support from the other cities. Barbara Gordon's intelligence had not faded with the city streetlights; she kept track of the material resources, the working phones, the maps in the No Man's Land. Cassandra Cain was now in the city, and her strength of arms served Gotham well in an era where communication and electricity were crippled. Helena Bertellini fought as well, and when Grayson and Drake finally threw their resources into the pot, the amalgamation of their power and Luthor's opened Gotham's doors once again.


	3. Part III

When Luthor and Wayne had completed their work, and Gotham's brother and sister cities welcomed it back into their arms, Gotham finally had time to process the developments that had occurred during its isolation.

First and foremost, Gotham had a Batgirl again. Although her compatriots did not yet know her name, Gotham knew Cassandra Cain all too well, and it decided that it was imperative to the highest degree that she should be able to communicate with the rest of the family. Gotham set to work on that immediately, and found an emerging telepath with the ability to rewrite Cain's brain to understand language the way everyone around her did.

This had the unexpected and decidedly unfortunate side effect of removing from the young Cain her dominance at fighting. Her blocks, her strikes, her defenses and attacks, had all been based on her ability to read body language; with the comprehension of written symbols substituted for her comprehension of the torsion of blood and muscle and bone, Cain's effectiveness was mutilated.

This was, of course, entirely unacceptable. Cassandra Cain was a valuable resource due to her combat ability; her intelligence had never been useful. Gotham attempted to rectify the mistake, to force the telepath to readjust her brain, but he did not understand how it had worked in the first place, and had not possessed the foresight to preserve that information. Cassandra needed to learn how to fight again – to be the fighter she was before – but this was impossible within the confines of safety.

Cassandra, however, was desperate. She was a fighter, born and bred: she had been trained to hurt and to break since before she could walk. Cassandra's skill, her life, had been taken from her, and she _demanded_ of the city that it find a way to fix this.

So Gotham, bowing to young Cain's wishes, hunted for alternative methods of teaching her to be again what she had been before. Out of all the possibilities, it judged the greatest to lie with Cain's own mother: Lady Shiva. Shiva, alone out of all the other fighters in the world, possessed Cain's former skill at reading body language. She could teach Cain how to do so, but she postulated one condition: that a year after she restored Cain's prowess, the two of them would fight to the death.

Cain accepted the agreement, fully expecting the death to be her own, but she accepted it regardless as the only way to regain her birthright, and, more significantly, as penance for the life she had taken. Shiva fought her daughter Cain and killed her, Cassandra refusing to employ her full skill. But Gotham and Shiva, both in agreement for once, could not allow Cain to fight at any less than her full potential. Merging the power of the Lady and the city, the two paragons resurrected Shiva's daughter, having finally appeased her need for atonement. When the two warriors fought again, Cain utilized her full strength and skill, and defeated her mother, cementing herself as the greatest combatant in the world.

Gotham had gained a new level of protector – an undefeatable warrior.

(_Everyone is undefeatable until he or she is beaten_, Gotham remembered, wisdom from long ago when the city was ruled by the Court of Owls and their Talons. Gotham reminded Cain to stay sharp, and gave her an extra push to train when it had the time. You could never be too careful, when you were the one on top. _Unsteady is the head that wears the crown_.)

But Cain's victory was tempered with Drake's contamination. Scared, as parents usually are, for the safety of his child, when Jack Drake found out that his son Tim was Robin he took him away from Gotham and the duty that was its salvation. Holding the secret identities of the Batman and his comrades over Tim's head, Jack forcibly extricated his son from the business of excising Gotham of its sin.

This was a great loss – not only to the city of Gotham, but to the Batman.

Over its years, Gotham had determined that the Batman functioned best with a Robin. A bright-eyed child along on patrol kept the Batman in check just as much as the symbol on his chest did, and as soon as he was ready to retire (_if the bastard didn't keel over and die first_) it would be a former Robin who would take over the mantle.

So Gotham decided to branch out in its choosing of the new Robin. Grayson had been a brilliant success, but Todd had been an absolutely spectacular failure, and Drake was now a lost cause, thoroughly crippled by his father. So Gotham reached out to, instead of its now archetypical black-haired male, blonde-haired Stephanie Brown, the former Spoiler, to don the red and green and to do the relentless job of keeping the Batman's own inner darkness at bay.

Wayne did not look at Brown with Gotham's eyes, though. Wayne saw Brown as a hindrance – a weakness. He only accepted her into the Family as a replacement for Drake, a way to lure his perfect Robin back to his side once again, and Gotham could do nothing more than hope that Wayne would grow to accept her, the way it accepted Grayson.

That was Gotham's mistake. In years past, the destruction wrought by Gotham's error would have brought terrible pain and sorrow, but by this time the failure only registered as one among many. Half of the darkness's victories were because of its vicious cunning, and the other half its exploitation of Gotham's unwitting stupidity.

In retrospect – perfect, beautiful retrospect – Gotham should have known that, in Wayne's heart, no one would replace Drake. Wayne was becoming darker and darker, more slave to the evil in the city than servant of the goodness, pushing away that which had once made him strong, and embracing the inner sadomasochist that only wanted to dance with the Joker till they both died.

When Brown disobeyed his orders – just as _every Robin before her had_, an act so ubiquitous it should have qualified as a rite of passage – Batman fired her. In his heart, Gotham's, and Stephanie's, they knew it was just an excuse.

So Stephanie, young and willful and desperate to prove herself to the only person who mattered in Gotham, and to the Boy Wonder she had been trying to impress for years, implemented the Batman's most dangerous, most daring plan.

It would have gone off without a hitch, had there not been one crucial mistake.

Brown did not know that Matches Malone was the Batman.

So what was supposed to be a gang takeover in which Matches Malone would rule all of Gotham's underworld became a gang war in which the various criminals and killers of Gotham brought death upon each other in levels unprecedented, even for a city so ripped apart by war and death that the Joker was seen as a natural disaster that one should be adequately prepared for every season.

The closest human analogy would be if an incompetent surgeon had, instead of removing a cancer, let it into the bloodstream.

In the chaos that ensued, three items of major import occurred: Black Mask became the leader of all the gangs in Gotham, a sick parody of the Bat's plan that went horrendously wrong; the people of Gotham turned against its dark protector in droves; and Stephanie Brown, the brave Bat, died.

Well, not really died, the city supposed. Her heart had stopped beating for a while. That was death, right? Humans were so _tricky _about that sort of thing.

Regardless of the morbid semantics, Stephanie Brown was brutally tortured by Black Mask, and she went to Africa to heal. Bruce Wayne and Roman Sionis both caused her grave injury, and what they thought was her death, in their own way, and they had to be punished.

Gotham was thoroughly done dealing with its firstborn hero's idiocy.

Drake, meanwhile, returned to the Robin mantle. Unfortunately for him, and in a way that Gotham refused to admit any affiliation with, his father died – a victim of the Captain Boomerang, a Flash rogue who had stepped out of retirement for one job. Over that time, the Batman became even more suspicious and paranoid toward the superpowered heroes – something that Gotham could not deal with, especially now. If he kept being so stubborn and fanatical, Bruce Wayne was going to have to die.

But his service could not be without a reward. Before his death, Wayne would at least be able to meet his son.

Ibn Al'Xuffasch (or, as he would come to be known in the city he would eventually adopt, _Damian Wayne_) was not the son his father wanted in any sense. He was the product of rape – Talia al Ghul, his mother, had drugged the Bat in one of his rarest moments of lowered paranoia – and Damian was not the perfect son that the Bat wanted. He was no Tim Drake, and when his reaction to that Robin was to nearly kill him, the Bat exploded.

When his son killed the Spook and brought his head back as a trophy, tying up his butler in the process, the Bat reacted with judicious and unmitigated rage. This behavior was unacceptable from an ordinary Gotham citizen, much less the Batman's own son.

In his anger, Wayne drove his son away. Damian returned to his mother, broken in a sense that came from rejection from someone who was more than his father – who was his god – and began training to be a receptacle for his grandfather.

However, Damian had been well trained, and he was nothing if not resourceful – the greatest possible melding of two great lines, just as his mother planned. When the time came for his body to be wrenched from him, Damian ran, going to his father's compound for help. Although he encountered stiff resistance in the form of Drake, he eventually brought the Bat and his allies to his side, and fended off the encroachment of his grandfather from beyond the grave.

Wayne, however, still refused to allow his son to take on his legacy and become a Robin, even through Gotham's attempts to force him to agree: Wayne was too concerned with his son's violent tendencies, with all the death that he had wrought, to allow him to wear the Bat-symbol, no matter how much it would help him.

By the time Darkseid attacked, Gotham was, to put it bluntly, arranging affairs to incapacitate Wayne, Senior. The best plan, it thought, would be the return of Bane – perhaps breaking the Bat, just like the old days – or maybe forcing the Bat to use a gun. There were so many possible plans, and the Bat was psychologically fragile enough that he would be forced give up the cowl soon.

None of that mattered, though, as soon as the Anti-Life Equation was released.

Gotham knew Darkseid. It had fought him in the darkness that infected its streets. Darkseid was the tyranny of the mob boss who kills his henchman for questioning him, the leader who turns his troops into parodies of himself, the self-styled king who brings only death and suffering upon his subjects. The mob was a fragment of Darkseid, and Gotham had fought the mob for as long as it could remember.

But the mobs were not DARKSEID. Darkseid was more than could be contained in the human flesh, more than could be imagined by the human mind – he was the _full embodiment _of tyranny, the strength of the dictator, the evil of man and city and world alike, forged into one being that desired nothing more than to befoul.

When Gotham looked upon him, it knew that what the monster-god said was true: All was one in Darkseid.

But – all existence be praised – the Bat did not know Darkseid the way the city did. Bruce Wayne knew Darkseid in a way that was all too familiar to him – a way that let him fight back to the breaking points of not only his body but his mind. Bruce Wayne had spent his entire life fighting the Mob, fighting the splinter of Darkseid that had come to be on Earth, fighting Gotham's inherent darkness, and having found its master, its ultimate expression, he was nothing more than happy that he could finally now cut off the pestilence at the source.

Bruce Wayne broke a prison that an alien god had deemed perfect. He shattered the minds of lesser beings attempting to emulate his power, and turned their overseer to his cause. And when the time came, and he had the chance to attack Darkseid, Wayne did not hesitate. He fired a bullet made of Radion, the same bullet that had killed Darkseid's son Orion, into Darkseid, using a gun – the weapon he had sworn to not use. And as the Flashes guided the Black Racer into the heart of Darkseid, to take him to Death, Gotham was glad that it could be proud of its prodigal son as he died.

But there was work to be done, now. Gotham City, as ever, needed a Batman, and it set out to procure one.

Yet, even from beyond the grave, Bruce Wayne reached out to foil Gotham City's attempt at self-defense. He had, it appeared, instructed to Dick Grayson to not, even in the event of Wayne's death, to don the cowl.

Grayson, in his childish naiveté, believed that this was because Wayne believed that Grayson and Drake could keep the city safe as Nightwing and Robin. Gotham, privy to Wayne's inner counsel, his twisted and conniving mind that had made him the most powerful man on the planet save (perhaps) Luthor, knew better – knew that Wayne had attempted to keep the Batman mantle to himself, and his biological son out of the family that he had built.

So, as Grayson essentially sat around on his hands, unable to curb the violence in Gotham in the only way that would work, Gotham decided to utilize another one of its tools.

Jason Todd had only wanted justice in his city, and he had always been eager to serve. With the Batman gone, it was a simple leap of logic for him to realize that Gotham needed a Batman just the same as it always dead – and there certainly wasn't one right now. Jason donned the cowl in his own way – with blatant armor and a knight's helmet, and guns that fired as quickly and strongly as his rage could pull the triggers.

Grayson, just as planned, heard the rumors of the new Batman around Gotham. Drake tried to don the cowl first, to confront his wayward brother, but Todd dealt with him easily; Grayson pursued and fought Todd, defeating him in his classic acrobatic style, and the younger Wayne saved Drake. All in all, it was a good end to a good story.

But an even better one occurred for Gotham: Grayson donned the cowl once again, just as he had years before, although this time it was against the will of his mentor.

Gotham had a Batman once again.

As soon as Grayson took the cowl, Gotham set to work. A new era had dawned – one that was led by a Batman who embraced his family, not pushed them away. Gotham's heroes could finally expand for the first time since Bruce Wayne had become a paranoid obsessive.

Damian Wayne became Robin. Although Bruce had no way to deal with his son, no understanding of his psychology, Dick was a far better leader, a far better brother than Bruce was a father, who was able to handle the hothead killer. Under Dick's guiding wing, Damian would grow into a Batman of his own style, one who would save Gotham in his own time.

Cassandra Cain gave up the identity of Batgirl. She had graduated, so to speak, and she deserved an identity all her own. She became the Black Bat, and expanded the scope of Bat operations to Hong Kong – a city whose darkness rivaled Gotham's own, and quite often collaborated when they thought it was in their best interest.

Stephanie Brown became Batgirl. Long relegated to be a third-tier member of the Bat-Family, an annoying Spoiler, a useless Robin, she came into her own wearing an eggplant batsuit, and began her new crimefighting career in the best tradition of all her predecessors.

Tim Drake forsook Robin, and began searching the world as Red Robin for some sign that his mentor was still alive, that Bruce Wayne was still out there, somewhere, trying desperately to justify his belief against the evidence.

He was doomed to be wrong. Bruce Wayne had died at the eyes of Darkseid, and no power still in the world could bring him back. But, even without Bruce Wayne its greatest son, the city went on.

Gotham had always been a city on the edge, and this was no less true now than it had been before. The difference, though, was in the implementation, in which edge the city danced. Under Bruce Wayne as Batman, the danger had always been the line between obsession and insanity: Batman as a dealer of death or a savior of life.

But Dick Grayson was a different Batman: one who brought the Family together, whose enemy and antithesis was not the cruel insanity of the Joker but the cold apathy of James Gordon, Jr. Grayson's Bat became not a symbol of fear to the criminals of Gotham, but one of hope to the people.

Gotham had always been a city dancing between two worlds – a city of absolutes and extremes.

But now, these extremes were ones that Gotham could accept. Instead of paranoia, the Bat sought acceptance; instead of isolation, he fought for unity. Grayson did his best to create a family in Gotham - to make the Bats one with their city.

Gotham saw Grayson's attempts, and appreciated the effort behind them. But the times would come when it pined for its lost son, for the one who gave his life so that those he loved could still have one. Sometimes, the city would remember all that it had lost – the young innocence of Jason Todd, the mobility and freedom of Barbara Gordon, and it would be so stressed by the weight of its failures that it would crumple and cry.

But every time, Gotham remembered how its heroes had died. It remembered the power of Darkseid, reaching out from space and yet close to home, and the power that the Mob had wielded, deep inside Gotham's secret heart. When Gotham was burdened by its failures, it remembered its mission, and rose once again to do battle.

It might have been the case, Gotham acknowledged, that it would never win. It could be that the darkness was buried too deep, inside the human soul, inside the city's soul, to ever be able to salvage the good left inside.

But that didn't matter.

Gotham would keep fighting anyway.


End file.
